Trailblazing Architect Kimberly Dowdell ’06 Aims to Inspire Others

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Also a Cornell trustee, she’s a passionate advocate—a leading voice on the importance of diverse perspectives in her field

By Joe Wilensky

“My very first presidency,” architect Kimberly Dowdell ’06 recalls with a laugh, “was around age seven.” Then a member of her church’s youth usher board, the Detroit native disliked the uniforms they had to wear—and she made her displeasure known.

“I learned that when you have complaints about something, and you articulate them, you get put in charge of the thing,” Dowdell says. “So they made me president and said, ‘Okay, go find different uniforms.’”

With a little help from her grandmother, she took on the challenge and contacted local suppliers. The resulting uniforms were not only more aesthetically pleasing, but also allowed for more arm movement—important functionality for the usher role.

Says Dowdell: “I just remember being like, ‘Yeah, we got that done.’”

Other leadership roles followed, from head RA in her boarding school dorm to president of her Cornell sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha.

Two decades later, Dowdell is director of strategic relationships and a principal at the global architectural firm HOK—and she has not one but two notable presidencies on her résumé.

She has led the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and, most recently, the American Institute of Architects (AIA)—the first Black woman to hold the latter position in its 167-year history.

She was the first Black woman to lead the American Institute of Architects in its 167-year history.

The bittersweet nature of the achievement was summed up by the headline of a November 2023 New York Times story that reported on Dowdell’s AIA presidency: “A Black Woman’s Rise in Architecture Shows How Far Is Left to Go.”

Now based in Chicago, Dowdell traces her passion for her profession, in part, to the childhood moment when she learned about the sad fate of the famed Hudson’s department store in downtown Detroit.

Once the second-largest store of its kind in the world, it was for decades her hometown’s social and commercial center, but it closed the year she was born. In 1998, the building was demolished—part of the city’s long disinvestment and decline.

Dowdell was around 11 when she began to realize that sites like Hudson’s represented an opportunity—and while she couldn’t fully articulate the aspirations it sparked, she says, “The gist was, if I can fix the buildings and the environment around them, that would help improve the way people feel about where they live.”

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On the Hill, she majored in architecture and spent a semester in the Cornell in Rome program; she later went on to earn a master’s of public administration from Harvard. (In 2022, she was elected by her fellow alumni to Cornell’s Board of Trustees, where she serves on the Buildings and Properties Committee.)

If I can fix the buildings and the environment around them, that would help improve the way people feel about where they live.

While still an undergrad, she co-founded the Social Economic Environmental Design (SEED) network, which connects the public with professionals who prioritize design principles that are community based and environmentally sound.

At HOK, she has done some hands-on architectural work—including contributions to the Doha, Qatar, airport—but her career has shifted toward the business of architecture, leveraging her keen leadership and organizational skills.

As the national president of NOMA from 2019–20, she increased opportunities and access for women and people of color in architecture and exceeded her goal of doubling the organization’s membership.

At AIA’s helm, she prioritized such issues as sustainability, adaptive reuse, and educating the public about the role architects can play in climate action.

She also grew mentorship programs, pushed for better salaries industrywide, lobbied on Capitol Hill, and expanded membership—pushing it over 100,000 for the first time (a goal that was particularly symbolic to her as the organization's 100th president).

She has repeatedly stressed the importance of diversity—and programs that increase access to the profession—in what remains an overwhelmingly white and male architecture world.

As she notes, only 25% of architects are women; just 2% are Black; and less than 0.5% are Black women.

Only 25% of architects are women; just 2% are Black; and less than 0.5% are Black women.

(There are only 600 Black women architects in the United States total, she points out: when she became licensed, she was the 295th.)

During her time leading the AIA, Dowdell launched an initiative encouraging city mayors and other municipal officials to enhance architects’ roles and to call upon them as key advisers in planning and design.

“I hope that this continues to spur more focused conversation and action toward really elevating design,” she says of her overall advocacy efforts. “A quote that I often share is: ‘Architecture, at its best, elevates the human experience.’”

Top: Dowdell stands near the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, DC. Photo courtesy of the AIA. (All images provided, unless otherwise indicated.)

Published February 7, 2025

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